Waiting To Be Taken
Old Jonathan had been fed up with his room. One window onto an air shaft, a radiator that performed its clanging monologue at 3 AM, and silence that refused to answer back. So on Tuesday, trash day on West 82nd (Manhattan ) he became his own discard.
He walked to West End and 82nd and leaned against a credenza with brass handles, like a prop waiting for stage directions. Around him: a chair with a dog’s autobiography chewed into the leg, a Breville that hissed philosophy instead of coffee, a dog in a tuxedo trapped in gilt.
No sign. Signs were for objects that didn’t know they were in a play. Jonathan knew.
His premise was simple, and therefore absurd: you put things on the curb, humans arrive, humans assign meaning by taking. Maybe for one day he’d be selected. Maybe for one day the universe would blink.
It wouldn’t. He knew that too. That was the contract.
By 8:30 AM, a woman with a French bulldog liberated the dog portrait. Jonathan watched the transaction and thought: So this is how value works. Someone points and says ‘this.’The sky, as expected, offered no footnotes.
At 10:15, a man in a beanie used Jonathan’s shoulder as leverage to lift the espresso machine. Jonathan didn’t flinch. I am furniture now, he thought. I am also the audience. The man didn’t thank him. The universe didn’t thank the man. The circuit was open, buzzing with nothing.
Noon: the chair went. The Franzen novels went. A single Le Creuset lid was adopted with more ceremony than Jonathan had received at his wedding. Each object was plucked from meaninglessness by a hand, then carried into another room where it would wait to become meaningless again.
Jonathan understood. He was Sisyphus, but the boulder was himself. He was Meursault, but the sun was a street lamp. He was on the curb because the alternative was his room, which was the same play with worse lighting.
At 5:10, the DSNY truck arrived. Two men in orange vests fed the credenza to the hopper. Jonathan stepped aside. To be compacted would be too literal. One of the men looked at him. “You alright, pops? Can’t put people out. That’s not a thing.” Jonathan smiled. “I know,” he said. “That’s the thing.” The truck left. The curb was empty. The world was empty. The play went on, because plays do. Jonathan was alone now. Just him and the street lamp on West End Avenue( Manhattan ), humming its sodium note. He looked up at it. It did not look back. Of course it didn’t. So he gave it his monologue.
“You see? You’re on every night. No one chooses you either. You don’t get carried home. You don’t get a new room. You just stand here and throw light at things that leave. And still, you turn on.”
He paused. The lamp buzzed. The 1 train groaned underground. The city declined to comment.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Jonathan said. “The whole trick. You don’t wait for the taking. You don’t beg the hand. You just be the thing that shows up. Even if no one claps. Even if the only review is the dark.”
He laughed then. A short, private sound. Not bitter. Not happy. Just lucid. He buttoned his wool coat. “I’ll see you Thursday,” he told the lamp. “Recycling. Maybe they take glass. Maybe they don’t. I’ll be here either way.”
He walked back to his room. The radiator would be waiting. The silence would be waiting. He would be waiting.
( Avtar Mota)
PS
Critique of the story
Avtar Mota’s “Waiting To Be Taken ” is a sharp, compact exercise in literary absurdism. The premise : an old man discarding himself on trash day risks twee symbolism, but the execution stays grounded through concrete, Upper West Side detail. The Breville, the Franzen novels, the Le Creuset lid: each object plucked from the curb makes Jonathan ’s invisibility more acute, and more human.
The story’s structure mimics a day’s futility with timestamps that feel like stage directions, reinforcing Jonathan’s sense that he’s both prop and audience. His self-awareness prevents him from becoming pitiable. When he thinks “I am furniture now”and “I am also the audience,” the story pivots from despair to lucid revolt. That’s the Camusian turn made flesh.
The street lamp monologue is the piece’s hinge. By addressing something equally unchosen, Jonathan reframes value: “You just be the thing that shows up.” It’s not hope, but defiance without illusion. The prose is lean, wry, and avoids sentiment. The universe stays indifferent; Jonathan chooses anyway.
At under 600 words, the story doesn’t waste a beat. If anything, the DSNY exchange could be trimmed further to keep the focus on Jonathan’s interior logic. But that’s minor. This is absurdism with a New York accent : precise, unsentimental, and quietly triumphant.
(J. Paul )
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